aphilso1

Not sure what side of the split you'd expect me to fall on, but here's my $0.03 (Should be $0.02, but inflation sucks)-- It sure would be nice to try hiring a coach with CFB head coaching experience in his prime. Not the up-and-comer, not the NFL guy who you hope can find success in college, not the coordinator who you hope can be a good CEO, and not the guy who lost his fire a decade ago. Just a real head coach with a real track record that you can look at and say "yeah, he knows how to be a coach. He can build a program, sustain it, make good hires for his staff, and recruit and develop talent sufficient to run his system." Chasing the next hot name in coaching can absolutely result in fantastic success (see Smart, Kirby and Swinney, Dabo). However, the result of a swing and miss on that type of hire is catastrophic. At this point I just want a guy whose floor is 6-6. A guy who can make a run at a conference title once in a while, but more importantly can avoid the embarrassing seasons. It seems like every time we go for a high ceiling/low floor hire we get burned. So give me the guy with a high floor, even if it means a lower ceiling. I'm over hiring a HC based on potential. I want to see a resume with results that he can point to and say "I can do that again, and I can do it here at Nebraska." Nothing against Mickey personally. Perhaps he will be a great head coach someday. But I'd rather hire someone who has produced results as a college HC before.

I see rumor mill topics popping up on the Nebraska Rivals message board today. I don't have access to those boards, so can only guess what they mean. New subjects include: Matt Rhule -Thoughts? Something Going Down Today? Smoke in north stadium Putting that together, and it seems people are expecting Rhule to be announced as the new football HC today. Anyone hearing these rumblings?

Wins? As in plural? That's implying we were going to win more than one game this year. Guess you're now the optimist in these here forums.

The vagueness appears intentional. Makes me wonder if DW has some kind of surgery coming up that is unrelated to basketball. Inquiring minds want to know, but I also realize that its his life and his privacy, so we may never know. And that is OK.

@basketballjones that's a really inefficient way of telling us that your wife made you sleep on the couch last night.

Well then. That’s not concerning at all. Nope. Everything is fine.

https://hailvarsity.com/staff/

Tom's answer is either completely disingenuous or idiotic. In the modern era of annual roster turnover and immediate transfer eligibility, it just isn't realistic for one power conference team's entire bench to be better than the best player on another power conference team. Maybe there are a couple exceptions when you talk about the top 2-3 most talented rosters in the country, but generally speaking you just can't hoard talent like you could in the 80's and 90's. No, Creighton's 10th best player is not better than Walker and Griesel.

Roburt Sallie, the sequel.

Before practices started I would have said Lloyd. But the more Fred talks, the more other players are mentioned and not Ramel. That makes me think he's not even currently in the top 7-8 rotational players, much less ready to be a breakout star. Our best scoring options (CJ and Walker) require a playmaker to set them up for buckets, and I don't think we have that type of playmaker on the roster. My vote goes for "we don't have that guy".

You know what's even better as a pair of Sweet 16 matchups? #8 vs Syracuse and #12 vs UCLA, rather than #8 vs #12 and Syracuse vs UCLA. That gives the average American a rooting interest, as we all love cheering for a small conference school to take down a blue blood. That's why re-seeding at the Sweet 16 would improve the tournament.

I will concede that point. Not sure how overall that would effect TV numbers though (which is what the decision will ultimately come down to anyway). If you re-seed, then you will likely have better viewership in the second and third weekend. But the downside is that fewer people filling out brackets means fewer people watching the opening weekend.

I agree that moving to 128 should mean all regular season and all tournament champs get in. But that adds what, maybe an extra 7 or 8 small conference AQs? The vast majority of the additional 60 teams will be selected on an at-large basis, which means the vast majority of the additional teams will be mediocre power conference teams. That's great for us as Husker fans, but bad for the tournament as a whole. 128 is not the answer.

I like your analysis, even though I disagree with your conclusion. I'm going to quote what I think is your key point here: "The whole reason to tune in to the tournament (and the only reason for probably 95% of sports fans to watch any college hoops at all) is to see the Cinderellas make their run." It seems you are assuming that an expansion to 128 will increase the number of Cinderella runs, but it won't. There are only so many potential Cinderellas out there (i.e. scrappy small conference teams with enough talent to take down a high seed). Doubling the field doesn't double the number of Cinderellas. Just look at the NIT field, and that tells you what teams would be added to the NCAA field if we expand to 128. You'll get a couple extra small conference regular season champs that lost their conference tourney. But you're getting a whole lot more Rutgers and Washingtons and Mississippi States -- teams that are boring, not a Cinderella, but just good enough that they can beat a good team on any given night. Going to 128 doesn't increase the number of Cinderella moments, but it does increase the likelihood of a bland Final Four field.

Two conflicting objectives: 1. Create chaos in early rounds (since the "Madness" is what makes casual fans turn their TVs on) and 2. Reward the best teams with a favorable shot at a national title. Current format skews heavily towards the first objective. The expansion from 64 to 68 slides a couple extra quality teams in around the 11-seed line while reducing a couple losers from the 16-seed line (which subtly strengthens Seeds 12-15 in the process). And as we're all aware, single elimination inherently increases upsets. If we want to BOTH have first weekend chaos AND consistently have a Final Four comprised of great teams (as opposed to teams that got hot in late March/early April), then re-seeding after the first two rounds makes a lot of sense. That keeps the early round chaos, but eliminates those quirky 8-seed vs 12-seed Sweet 16 matchups that no one watches. Because let's face it. David vs Goliath in early rounds is great, but David vs Even-Smaller-David in mid-rounds is awful entertainment value. So we should re-seed those Davids to put more Goliaths in their paths for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8, which simultaneously rewards the top seeds for having a great season. An expansion to 128 would look like more "chaos" on paper, as doubling the number of games should also roughly double the number of upsets. But a 24-seed SEC team beating a 9-seed B1G team just isn't as entertaining as an AQ 12-seed beating a ranked 5-seed from a power conference. Doubling the field will not double the number of small conference champions, so what we will get is a ton more .500 major conference teams squaring off against each other. That is great for fanbases like us, as the Huskers are exactly the sort of team that would most benefit from a doubled field. But it's not actually great for casual fans unless they find away to double the number of Davidsons, Hamptons, UMBCs, and Florida Gulf Coasts in the field. And even if you do double the number of small conference schools, are they really going to be good enough to challenge the better teams? A lot of those conferences only have a single team with a pulse, and seeing that one team against a blue blood is what makes the early rounds entertaining. Expanding to 128 also gives the best teams one extra game to stub their toe, which waters down the Final Four even further. TL;DR -- Re-seeding before the Sweet 16 is the best way to improve the Tournament, since it keeps early round chaos while also rewarding the best teams with weaker opponents in the second weekend. Expanding to 128 is not as obvious of a choice as it seems, since it will water down the Final Four further while not actually creating additional iconic opening round moments.

Great anecdote, @hskr4life. I'm curious how you became a Nebrasketball fan though if you're a KSU grad. Husker basketball is enough of a niche sport that it seems most of us around here were lured in by cheap student section seats and Runzas in the concourses. At least for me, I simply didn't have the good sense to leave upon graduation.

Quasi-related story. One year while in college a fellow Red Zoner and I drove down to KC for the Big 12 tournament. We bought some nosebleeds from a scalper, but 15 minutes before tip off it was clear that the section reserved for the Huskers' family and friends (basically the first 8-10 rows directly behind the Husker bench) were going to remain 90% empty. So we moved down to seats that were close enough to be awesome but not so close as to draw suspicion...probably around the 4th or 5th row behind the bench. Well just after we got settled, A.D. Tom Osborne and University Chancellor Harvey Perlman show up with their wives. They take a long look at us, a long look at their tickets, grin at us, and then proceed to sit in the empty seats directly in front of us. Clearly we were in the seats reserved for the athletic director and chancellor, but they were cordial enough to sit in someone else's unused seats instead.

Wilcher - better movement off the ball. He's going to be a focus this year for opposing defenses, and hopefully he has been watching Klay Thompson footage on repeat all offseason to see how a dude with zero dribbling ability can still get open looks. Breidenbach - general coordination/development. He clearly looked like a freshman last season and the injury cut off his ability to work through that initial hurdle on the floor. I'm hoping he looks like a more polished sophomore version of himself despite the missed time. Tominaga - Shot selection is probably the correct answer, I will agree with you on that. I don't see Keisei as having B1G-level skills (other than shooting) or length, so the mental aspect of the game is where he will need to improve. Walker - Learning to create his own scoring. Last season the majority of his points came via a Verge assist. I don't see a PG on this roster that can consistently set DW up for layups like Verge did last year.

It seems to me that curse goes all the way back to Dr. Naismith himself. We traded the program's entire future for one game. "Nebraska, by then known as the "Cornhuskers", played an out-of-state opponent for the first time the following season, defeating James Naismith and Kansas 48–8 in what is still the worst loss in KU history. NU's 1900 team was retroactively ranked second nationally by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Cornhuskers_men's_basketball#cite_note-5

1. If a team has multiple ultra quick guards then we will need to be much quicker to help/rotate or go zone. If a team has great big men in addition to those multiple quick guards then they are probably a top 15-level talent team and I'd expect us to get boat raced. 2. I assume Sam will be used very similarly to how Banton was used in '20-'21. 3. Our shooters will struggle to get open looks. 4. This has to be our #1 team strength if we are going to win at all. We have a smart coaching staff and a crew of (allegedly) teachable players. Fundamentals and effort should be drastically improved this year. 5. We have enough guys that can shoot but not enough guys that can create their own shot or create a shot for others. We may have a few Klay Thompson Lites on this team, but zero Steph Curry Lites. 6. Gary and DW will start together but that doesn't mean they will play the bulk of their minutes together. Is the other team beating us up inside with pure size? Then Gary moves to the 3, Wil comes in at the 4, and Keita gets a few more minutes to keep Walker fresh and out of foul trouble. Do we need more scoring? Then CJ moves to the 4 in order to get an extra guard on the floor. 7. Keita better be able to hold his own 1-on-1 against other bigs, or else I don't know what his role will be. His offensive numbers in JUCO were inefficient, and scoring in the paint is much harder in the B1G. If he doesn't defend and rebound then he doesn't play. 8. If I'm Fred, Keisei's role would be as a sub late in the first half to throw up a couple heat checks. If his shot is on then he'll be in the rotation in the second half. If his shot is off then he can go ahead and shower and change into street clothes at halftime. 9. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 10. I'm not at all worried about this team reverting back to hero ball, because I don't think this team can play hero ball. Who on this team even has the capability to get to the rim when surrounded by 2-3 defenders? Who can create space for themselves to jack up an ill-advised 3pt shot? Lloyd, maybe. But do we really think he will stay on the floor if he's hurting the team? No.

Gary may be our best defender regardless of whether he is covering the opposing team's 1-4. Obviously we'd lose some of his rebounding if he is face guarding out on the perimeter, but if we need a stop I bet he's the guy glued to the opposing team's stud. Seems weird that we would use our 4 on the other team's 1, but I don't think that's out of the question.

I admire the fans who still drink the Koolaid. Wish I was one of you.

Who gets buckets for us? Walker and CJ should be our top 2 scorers, and neither can dribble or create their own shot. We also don't have a true PG to set them up for open looks. Seems unreasonable that Sam can fill both of those missing roles (shot creator, both for himself and others). Not sure this roster can consistently put up 60 points per game. Gonna need to keep the other team in the 50's, which is a very tall task.

STARTERS Griesel Bando Wilcher Gary Walker ROTATION Wilhelm Lloyd Keita Dawson The starters seem somewhat obvious to me so I won't spend much time going into analysis on those 5. I think Gary starts for the reasons millerhusker said above, but that starting lineup is a little short. Breidenbach as the 6th man gives you length, and Gary has enough defensive versatility that you can see him on the floor at the same time as the lateral quickness-challenged trio of Wil, CJ, and DW. I'd guess that most games will see Wil as first man off the bench, either as a direct replacement for Gary or as a way of adding length while Gary shifts up and guards the other team's 2 or 3. I haven't heard much said about Lloyd this offseason, which does worry me. But on a team full of hustle guys and role players, he looks like the only one who has star potential. I just feel like talent alone should be enough to get him into the top 7 on the team in terms of minutes played. Keita will be a big body in a league that requires you to play lots of big bodies. Hard to see him not making the rotation, but I think we will be disappointed considering how hyped his recruitment was. My guess is he will be defensively ready but lacking the offensive capability that some are expecting. Dawson sure has been talked up as a spark plug ever since getting to campus. Gotta be enough to sneak his way into that final rotation spot, right? I'm guessing some games he doesn't play at all, and others he plays significant minutes for us. Such is the life of an end-of-the-rotation player. Everyone else will still play. HCFH knows he needs all hands on deck this year if he wants any hope of seeing a next year. No redshirts, but also no meaningful minutes from the rest of the crew. Keisei could be the exception if he is subbed in and gets hot from 3, but his lack of any other basketball skill will keep him from playing regularly.

I missed the first 20 minutes yesterday but caught the rest. Yikes. What a terrifyingly bad performance. LDLT was awful in a match that should have played to his strengths. Sands' performance made me realize just how badly we need Jedi playing every single critical minute at the World Cup...just no quality depth at all at LB. And even some of the guys we have come to take for granted as consistent performers were just bad (Zimmerman, Adams, Weston). And so much for figuring out the #9 position, as no one fed the striker a chance the entire match. Ugh. Turner put a stranglehold on that #1 kit though.